January 28, 2016 – At Sea

We’re making good progress at 17 knots heading WSW toward Hawaii on our third sea day out of San Francisco. We have one more day at sea tomorrow, as we still have about 850 nautical miles to go before arriving in Honolulu on Saturday (Jan 30). Captain Vorland has kept the ship’s speed down somewhat because of the strong winds and high seas we’ve been experiencing. So far there haven’t been many outdoor activities, and it’s an experience for most of us just walking inside the ship. We went out and looked around on deck yesterday. There were really high waves in the swim pool, crashing on the sides with water spraying from the pool up about 25 to 30 feet – very impressive! Jim has been able to get in his morning 3-mile walks despite the wind and sea swells. Conditions are noticeably better today, and outside temperature has reached 70°F – far better than the low 50s we had in San Francisco.

The first formal night (Black-Tie Optional) on Tuesday evening was nice, with about 80% of the men in tuxedos and lots of sparkly outfits on the ladies. Meals in the Crystal Dining Room are always excellent – food arranged on the plates like works of art, great selections, and tasty. For formal night that was no exception. We marvel at how they can serve such spectacular meals to so many people all at the same time and have it look and taste so special. Luckily, the portions are not gigantic; that’s good.

Tuesday night’s show in the Galaxy Lounge – “My Life – the Music of Billy Joel” was great. James Fox and the Crystal Ensemble of Dancers covered a large number of Billy Joel’s hit songs. The performances were loud, lively, and fun. Of course, James Fox starred on Broadway singing these same songs, so he was near perfect. We were impressed that the dancers performed so well despite the ship’s rolling and bucking in heavy seas. The Wednesday night show was a comedy ventriloquist – Mark Merchant. He was very funny, and we enjoyed the show a lot.

The past two days at sea there have been six excellent enrichment speakers offered. We went to four of their presentations and found them well worth attending– two on the Middle East, and two dealing with the Hawaiian Islands. There are so many things going on that it’s impossible to do everything – there are many different fitness classes, Spanish language classes, bridge lessons (both beginning and intermediate), knitting classes, needlepoint lessons, dancing classes, art lessons, memoir writing – just as examples. Of course, there’s also the casino, Bingo, Afternoon Tea, the spa, etc.

Both of us signed up for the World Cruise Olympic Games and received free t-shirts just for participating. There were more than 20 different categories, so there’s something for everyone. Some require more athleticism than others, as there’s some strenuous swimming categories along with scrabble, solitaire, and social bridge.

We forgot to send out this picture of the San Francisco skyline we took the first night on board. So here it is, just to prove that we were there.

We’ll write again after our port stop in Honolulu.

Jim & Ginny

January 26, 2016 – At Sea

We left something important off of yesterday’s posting that might help explain what was actually happening. Entry onto the ship in San Francisco on Sunday (Jan 24) was only for the 358 Full World Cruise passengers. That’s the primary reason the ship was not crowded when we embarked and also why we got such personalized service. All remaining passengers, who are not doing the full 102-day voyage, came on board the following day (Jan 25). The full voyage is actually six separate “segments” (an average of 17 days per segment) and these segment passengers come and go at the major ports of San Francisco, Sydney, Bali, Singapore, Shanghai, and Tokyo, returning to San Francisco. We haven’t heard yet how many total passengers are actually on board right now. Maximum capacity for Crystal Serenity is 1,070 passengers.

The ship departed San Francisco on time yesterday at 4:00 pm to begin the cruise to our first port-of-call in Honolulu. We won’t arrive there until Saturday (Jan 30). Between now and then we’ll have a lot of sea days. But let’s return to last Sunday (Jan 24) – the day we boarded Crystal Serenity (the day before all the other passengers arrived).

Festivities began for World Cruise passengers at 5:00 pm with pre-event cocktails and music at two different venues – Palm Court (Deck 12) and Avenue Saloon (Deck 6). We went up to the Palm Court at about 5:30 and listened to the Crystal Sextet playing dance music. The most interesting thing we observed was the large number of single women dancing with the eight different “dance hosts” that Crystal brought on board for the cruise. The hosts were kept busy the whole time we were there.

We went down to the Crystal Plaza and Atrium – a large open area mid-ship on Deck 5. We wanted to get a place to sit and watch the activities, so we arrived early. The whole area was colorfully decorated, and yet another band, the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra, was setting up to play. At 6:30 the musical entertainment began, followed by Crystal’s CEO and President – Edie Rodriguez – who gave a welcoming address. Then the excitement started, with lots of confetti and hundreds of balloons falling from the ceiling. The jazz group picked up the tempo appreciably, and it was a very festive scene – great fun was had by all.

After the amazing welcoming celebration, we all went into the Crystal Dining Room for an equally amazing choreographed dinner. Of course, it was wonderful with far too many courses to describe here. Somehow, the Crystal Plaza was completely cleaned of all the confetti and balloons by the time we finished dinner. More musical entertainment was underway there, with the big band sounds of the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra. Other people went to Avenue Saloon to hear more of the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra (a really great group), which was scheduled to play until 1:00 am.

At about 9:30 we went to the Galaxy Lounge (main show theater) to attend the special 10:00 pm performance of what was titled Viva Voce. This was a solid hour of spectacular music featuring four superb vocalists from the San Francisco Opera, a 35-member orchestra (mixture of Crystal Serenity musicians and guest artists from San Francisco), five featured dancers, a chorus, and Crystal Ensemble. We’re not normally opera fans, but this performance was superb. The soloists’ voices were extraordinarily powerful; the dancers and singers were very talented as well. In fact, the one word we could think of to describe this performance was stunning.

The entire evening was unexpectedly overwhelming – definitely an experience to be remembered forever. When we finally returned to our room, we found World Cruise commemorative gifts for us from Crystal – monogrammed hats, polo shirts, jackets, and leather-covered journals. There was also a colorful wall map with our itinerary on it.

The following day, Monday (Jan 25): We woke up a little late and started back on unpacking our suitcases, after a quick breakfast at the Lido Café. Somehow we managed to find a place for everything in our room. After a snack-style lunch (crackers and cheese) in the Bistro, we watched all the new passengers arriving and then worked on our display calendars which we attach to one of the walls in our stateroom. We’ve found these calendars to be useful with dry-erase markers to keep track of the activities, excursions, classes, formal nights, etc. that are scheduled for each day of the cruise.

For the ship’s departure at 4:00 we went up to the Palm Court – a large, glass enclosed room on the 12th deck at the very front end of the ship – for the sail-away party. It was exciting to sail under the Golden Gate Bridge, as we headed out to sea.

We had asked to be assigned to a table for six in the dining room, but it actually turned out to be eight of us -- four American couples from different states: Florida (that’s us), Colorado, California, and Hawaii. The couple from California are on just Segment 1 of the cruise and will be leaving us in Sydney to fly home.

Today (Jan 26) is our first “normal” day of the cruise, and we mostly rested. Jim went out at 6:00 this morning to do the first of his morning 3-mile walks on the walking track around the outside of Deck 7. Unfortunately, it was quite cold and windy this morning, so he headed inside and did a speed walk around Deck 6 indoors for an hour. He saw only one other passenger up and walking (also indoors) that early in the morning.

We attended an enrichment-series lecture by Dr. Robert Freedman, a professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. This was the first of his four talks on “Understanding the Contemporary Middle East.” Then we went to the Full World Cruise Meet & Greet in the Palm Court, hosted by Cruise Director Rick Spath and World Cruise Hostess Stacey Huston. Stacey described her job to be liaison between World Cruise guests and the rest of Serenity. She plans and helps implement all special World Cruise activities, and she promised to be corresponding with us regularly over the next three months with updates on activities, events, and news.

Tonight is the first “Black-Tie Optional” dress code evening (what used to be called Formal Night), followed by a concert production titled, “My Life: The Music of Billy Joel” starring James Fox. We’ll tell you about it in our next posting.

Jim & Ginny

January 25, 2016 – San Francisco

We’re on board the Crystal Serenity, and a lot has happened since we left Florida three days ago.

The flights from Fort Myers to San Francisco were uneventful and worked out very well. We were worried about snowstorm Jonas which was threatening the east coast of the U.S. At one point, it looked like the storm might hit Atlanta before moving up the coast. But the weather forecast changed to rain, and that’s exactly what we had in Atlanta. It was quite bumpy on the flight, but we landed in Atlanta on time. Of course, we were very happy we didn't make our connections through New York or Washington, DC, as they were both clobbered with about two feet of snow. The flight to San Francisco was two hours late taking off from Atlanta; but it was smooth travel across the country, and the cloud cover dissipated long enough for us to have a good view of the Rocky Mountains as we cruised over Colorado. 

After landing, we caught a taxi to our hotel, the Marriott Hotel at Fisherman's Wharf. The first night in San Francisco we were fairly tired, so we made a beeline to the In-N-Out Burger location about three blocks from our hotel. We'd heard a lot about this West Coast chain, so we wanted to try it out. Maybe it was the 3-hour time zone change and we were too tired to appreciate it, but In-N-Out didn't seem like anything special to us. The burgers were okay, but that's about all. On the other hand, the prices were reasonable and the place was packed with customers. They must be doing something right.

After a good night's sleep, Jim took a short one hour walk around Fisherman's Wharf early in the morning (around 7:00 am), including Pier 39 to see the ever-present, noisy sea lions.

Then, at about 9:00, we headed out on a 2 1/2 hour Big Bus tour to see many of the San Francisco attractions. The buses come by every 20 minutes, and customers can hop-on and hop-off at any one of 20 locations. These are the standard double-deck, open-top buses that we've seen at many major cities around the world. We always enjoy doing these tours, because it's an inexpensive way to see the sights and then get off the bus if we want to explore someplace in particular. We sat downstairs (inside), because there was a misty light rain outdoors. It was a very good tour that we can recommend to you, and we got off the bus at Chinatown to walk around there for a while. We had planned to stop for lunch in Chinatown but didn't see anything that appealed to us on the main streets. We then decided to walk back to the hotel but gave up after about a mile when some heavier rain showers started. Ginny was tired of walking anyway, so we caught a taxi back.

After the rain stopped and the sun came out, Jim ventured out and walked some more around the city (about 3 miles) and enjoyed it immensely, while Ginny stayed in the room to read – she finished her first book of the hundreds she downloaded onto her Kindle. Of course, being Saturday, Jim encountered throngs of other people out walking. Workers were busy assembling NFL Experience venues for Super Bowl 50, which will be held in the Bay Area on Feb 7th. The NFL Experience will be open for all the tourists and football enthusiasts expected in town from Saturday, January 30 through Sunday, February 7, the day of the game itself.

For dinner Saturday night we walked a few blocks to Cioppinos, a fairly large restaurant on the waterfront. It was a simple meal - -a cup of chowder and small pizza for Jim and "Chowder in a Bread Bowl" for Ginny, with sodas for each of us. Even though the food was very good and the wait staff were helpful, it was a lot pricier than the previous night -- $50 at Cioppinos vs. $10 at In-N-Out Burgers. Now we know why In-N-Out was so crowded.

We enjoyed our 2-night stay in San Francisco, but it was time to start our 102-day world cruise. Crystal sent a car to pick us up at the hotel on Sunday at 12:45 and delivered us right to the ship. A well-dressed gentleman greeted us and personally escorted us along a red carpet into the terminal building. After passing through security, we were greeted again, and this person escorted us to the counter to register onto the ship (collect passports, take a picture, etc.). Amazingly, we were the only passengers there, with at least 15 people staffing additional computer terminals to handle the (non-existent) crowd. It couldn’t have been easier or faster for us. Total time from getting out of the car and stepping onto the ship took maybe 10 minutes. We think there wasn’t a big crowd of passengers because everything was handled so efficiently that there was never a backup. On some cruises we’ve been on, it has taken us an hour or more to do what we did here in 10 minutes. Once on board the ship, a crew member grabbed our hand-carried luggage (roll-ons) and escorted us directly to our stateroom. Crystal really does this process extremely well making us feel very special -- VIP treatment at its best.

When we reached our stateroom, we could barely step in and move around, as the space was already full with the four large suitcases we had shipped from home via Luggage Concierge two weeks ago, plus the smaller suitcase a crew member removed from the car when we arrived at the ship (somehow it miraculously made it to our room about the same time we did). Needless to say,we spent most of the afternoon starting to work on the suitcases. We definitely didn't finish unpacking, but we did enough to clear space on the bed for us to sleep that night and get dressed to attend the gala World Cruise Welcome Celebration that began at 5:00 pm and lasted until 1:00 am. We made it until 11:00 pm, which was mighty late for us!

We'll wait for tomorrow's blog to describe everything that happened at the gala celebration. To say the least, it was extraordinary and spectacular. Bottom -- we had a memorable day.

Jim and Ginny

January 8, 2016 – Luggage Pickup

For us, today was a big milestone for the 2016 world cruise, as UPS came and picked up our suitcases for shipment to Luggage Concierge in the port of San Francisco. The UPS man (Robert) arrived at about 4:30 pm and departed again after only about 10 minutes.  We expect to see the four bags again on January 24 in our stateroom on board Crystal Serenity.

Over the past 15 years we’ve done a lot of cruising (on many different cruise lines), and deciding what to bring on a long trip such as this one involves big decisions. It’s always good to get that piece of vacation planning finished. The good part is that, once we’re on the ship, we only need to unpack once while we visit so many interesting world ports for 3½ months. Both of us will bring a small roll-on bag on the airplane ride to San Francisco that will contain important things that we absolutely must have with us (tickets, medicines, passports, cameras, etc.) in the unlikely event that some of our luggage gets lost.

Now that we’re not worried as much about packing, we can concentrate on other things that must be done at home before departure. Examples include making sure bills are paid while we’re gone (they should all be paid automatically), filing an extension to the IRS for 2015 tax returns, updating car registrations (which expire in March), arranging with a neighbor to collect and save our mail, setting up transportation to the airport, and so forth. We have two weeks to handle all these details, along with other last-minute necessities that might arise.

We’ve scheduled two days in San Francisco before boarding the ship – as assurance that any flight delays getting there won’t cause us to miss the ship’s departure, as well as give us an opportunity to look around the city. That means we’re also checking one bag on the flight, to live out of in the hotel. Not only that, we can pack anything in that bag that we might have missed in the four bags we gave to UPS today.

We’ve had some questions about Crystal Serenity. Here’s a picture and a few facts:

Guest Capacity: 1,070 passengers

Crew Size: 655

Number of Decks: 13

Staterooms: Nine guest decks with 535 staterooms on five decks

Dimensions: 68,870 gross tons, 820 ft. length, 106 ft. width, 25 ft. draft

Dining Options: One main dining room, three specialty restaurants, Lido Deck buffet, Trident pool grill, Bistro (European-style coffee bar), Vintage Room (private dinners with custom-designed menu and fine wine education) and, of course, room service

Entertainment and Education Options: Too many to list

We’re ready to go but must wait another two weeks before departing Fort Myers for San Francisco on our grand adventure. We met someone living near us who will also be on our world cruise. He boarded the Serenity in Miami three days ago (Jan 5) for a 19-day cruise, via the Panama Canal, to San Francisco. By doing this, he avoided flying across the country. We’re a little envious but decided that a 102-day cruise on the ship, plus three extra days in San Francisco, was enough for this year.

Jim & Ginny

January 2, 2016 -- Looking Forward

Welcome to our blog – a diary of our grand adventure, as we sail on Crystal Cruise’s World Cruise for 2016. We plan to update this blog, whenever Internet connections are possible along the way, to describe what we’re seeing and doing.

We will be aboard Crystal Serenity as she departs on January 25, 2016, round-trip from San Francisco, on what is being called the Grand Pacific Panorama World Cruise. We will be onboard for the entire 102-day journey, returning to San Francisco on May 6th.

We’ve been thinking about and planning for this trip over the past 18 months and can’t believe that the departure date is almost here - now only three weeks away. We have all our travel documents in hand, including cruise tickets and visas; we have all the necessary immunizations; and we’ve signed up for some of the excursions we will experience in the early part of our trip around what’s called the Pacific Rim.

Shown below is an overly simplified depiction of our intended route.

Although not shown in the map above, there are actually 48 port calls scheduled in 19 different countries. Most exciting are some of these highlights – six two-night stays in Sydney, Bali, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, Shanghai, and Beijing; four single-night stays in Honolulu, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, and Tokyo; full-cruise passengers (that’s us) will go on a “complimentary” 3-day overland Beijing tour to see the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, Great Wall and more (including hotel accommodations, meals, transportation, admissions, etc.).

A trip of this length requires quite a packing job, considering the broad range of temperatures we will experience crossing the equator twice, and going from 30° South latitude, to 60° North, where it will probably be below freezing for our visits in April.  We contracted with Luggage Concierge -- a company recommended by Crystal Cruises -- to transport the biggest part of our luggage from our home to the ship, with a pickup date of January 8th. If all goes according to plan, the luggage should be in our cabin when we board the ship on January 24th. We think they’re shipping the luggage across the country – from Florida to California – by truck in the middle of winter; that’s why the pickup is two weeks before being needed in San Francisco. Crystal will reimburse us for the cost of shipping the luggage (up to $500 per person).

This is our second World Cruise. Back in 2013 we sailed fully around-the world on Holland America Line’s ms Amsterdam and had a wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime, experience that we thought could never be repeated. But then we saw the itinerary of this 2016 Crystal World Cruise and decided to spend more time on the open seas. We look forward to experiencing many new ports.

We’ll add to this blog at least once more before leaving for San Francisco. As for now, we’d better start packing.

Jim & Ginny